Use of the Internet has increased dramatically in the past several years. There has been a tremendous explosion in its use by both adults and children from the home environment for retrieving information, making transactions for the purchase of advertised goods and services, engaging in chat room conversations, and general browsing or "surfing the Net", as it is commonly known. These activities have replaced television-viewing in many households. Access to the Internet is most frequently provided to a user's terminal through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), which can be accessed by the user over the user's Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) connection through their Local Exchange Carrier (LEC). The Internet has also become a medium over which telecommunications can take place using what is known as Internet Telephony. With respect to the latter, telecommunication takes place via a terminal or a telephone set over an IP Telephony Network (ITN) rather than the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). In an ITN, voice signals are transmitted via digital IP voice packets rather than via circuit-switched digital voice signals, as on the PSTN. Gateways at each end of the IP telephony call interconnect the PSTN and the ITN and translate voice signals into packets for transmission on the ITN and packets into voice signals for transmission on the PSTN.
With such a time-intensive use of one's telephone line for Internet-related activities, an incoming telephone call directed to such a heavy Internet user's telephone number will have great difficulty in being completed. In fact, it is not uncommon for a calling party to experience a busy signal for hours on end as he or she attempts to reach a household where the telephone line is kept busy with such activities. Eventually a calling party's frustration becomes disgust and he or she gives up in their attempt to reach their intended called party, with a loss of revenue to the telephone company for the incomplete call. The recent flat-rate pricing by several major Internet Service Providers has even exacerbated the problem since users have no financial incentive to minimize their time connected to an Internet Service Provider. Various solutions to this problem have been proposed. An obvious solution for the heavy Internet user is to subscribe to a separate telephone line that can be used exclusively for Internet telephony and other Internet-related activities. The disadvantage, of course, is the extra monthly cost incurred by the subscriber for the additional telephone line. In co-pending patent application Ser. No. 08/562,678, filed Nov. 27, 1995, a method is disclosed for completing a call over an IP Telephony network. The disclosed method relies on subscribing to call waiting/call forwarding features on the telephone line and depends on a remote access call forwarding capability. In co-pending patent application Ser. No. 08/625,963, filed Apr. 1, 1996, an Internet on-hold method is disclosed in which the telephone network, upon receipt of an incoming call to an Internet-busy telephone line, informs the ISP serving the called party of the incoming call and, upon acceptance by the called party, places the Internet call on hold and forwards the incoming call to the called party over the PSTN onto the telephone line to the called party.
A methodology is desirable that enables a called party to receive an incoming call while his or her POTS telephone line is busy on an Internet-related activity, such as an IP Telephony conversation or "surfing the Net", and which methodology does not require call waiting/call forwarding or Internet-on-hold features on the telephone line.